


five videos ben never posted because rosa would have beaten the shit out of him (and one he didn't even film because jaquie didn't invite him to her wedding)

by orphan_account



Category: Lovely Little Losers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:44:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stanley’s sister sighs, dropping her bag on the floor. “That was the worst plane ride of my life. I hate this continent, I this country and I hate this entire fucking planet except for Prague and certain southern regions of Siberia.”</p><p>“So does Jaquie,” says Peter, his mouth quirking up at the corner. “Although I’m not sure she’s been to Prague.”</p><p>“I’ve not been to Siberia, either, so don’t,” says Jaquie without looking up from her script. “Who goes to Siberia, anyway?”</p><p>“I had some of the best sex of my life in Siberia,” says Stanley’s sister, and sighs again. “Where am I sleeping?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	five videos ben never posted because rosa would have beaten the shit out of him (and one he didn't even film because jaquie didn't invite him to her wedding)

 

 

ONE. IN WHICH ROSA IS PISSED OFF AND JAQUIE MANDERS ACCIDENTALLY ACQUIRES A ROOMMATE

 

Jaquie does not—repeat—does _not_ want to go to Peter’s flat. She likes Peter, yeah, or maybe could like him, if he hadn’t stolen her part (she’d wanted that part, you know, could have been a Faustus that’d blow Costa fucking McClure’s fucking brains out, she knows it, they both know it’s true, and still he chose Peter—not that she’s _surprised_ ), but as much as it pains her to say it, even under the best of circumstances—Peter Donaldson is not the problem here.

No, the problem is Peter Donaldson’s _flat_.

Not the flat itself, obviously, which is quite nice, considering, but the inhabitants of the flat—Dick Hobnobs, skinny and buck-toothed, who carries a camera around at all times and actually films her while she’s doing lines, because he is a pervert; Freddie Kingston, who is hot, but also weird and loud and terrifying and clearly some kind of control freak; Stanley Jake, who is remarkably unattractive, contributes nothing to conversation or to society in general and who, using either voodoo or one of those sparkly magic love potions from Harry Potter, has managed to make Peter Donaldson fall in love with him.

(“You should move out,” is the first thing Jaquie said to Peter when she caught him alone, after that first, disastrous visit to the flat—Fred wouldn’t let him walk her home because it was “past curfew,” for reasons that Jaquie can only assume have nothing to do with her or Peter and everything to do with her fucking Fred’s fucking control kink, so she corners him at rehearsal the next day and Peter just says, “I can’t,” goes all soft and dewy-eyed and embarrassing like a character from fucking Marlowe, and that’s when Jaquie knows he’s beyond intervention.)

“I don’t like your flat,” she says to Peter, Wednesday night, because he asked her to come over and run lines with him, “I don’t like your flat and I think we should do it at my flat,” and then he says what she hoped he wouldn’t, which is, “Curfew is at ten. It’s nine already. If I stay out at yours Freddie’ll skin me alive.”  
  
“Case in point,” mutters Jaquie, “your flat is terrible.”

“Not everyone in my flat is terrible.” 

“Everyone in your flat is terrible,” she says, and she’s already lost. She sighs. “I’ll stay for an hour, okay? And if I see Dick and his camera within one hundred yards of me—”

“Benedick—”

“Whatever. If I see it, I’m leaving.”

“Fine.” Peter grins, swats her with his rolled-up Faustus script in a way he probably thinks is friendly. “I’ll walk you there.”

“One hundred yards,” she calls after him as he goes to get his coat, just to be sure he knows she’s serious, but the way he smiles at her as they’re leaving makes her think he doesn’t, makes her think he knows she’s never been serious about anything in her whole miserable fucking life.

 

 

 

Jaquie does not—repeat— _does not_ want to go to Peter’s flat, and she means that, but then she gets there, and it’s fine, really—they go over their lines, and Jaquie’s forgotten how much she loves it, loves fucking Marlowe, the way the words feel on her tongue, every line a low, steady rhythm, things she must’ve said hundreds, thousands of times in rehearsal, but she never tires of them. She loves Marlowe, and she likes Peter, and he’s sitting there across from her reading the lines, slow and easy like it’s his first time still, and there, that’s how they get her, in the end, lured into a false sense of security, because then the door is thundering open and Stanley is there.

Dickben is with him, and beside him is a newcomer—a girl. She glances at Jaquie and then away, as if bored. She’s wearing black eyeliner, and her hair is awful. 

“Oh, uh, Jaquie? This is Balthy’s sister,” says Peter (Balthy, Jaquie thinks, revolted, they’ve moved on to nicknames now, dear _God_ ) and Jaquie nods at her before returning to her script. Marlowe is better than all of you, she thinks, Marlowe at least knew how to rhyme.

Stanley’s sister sighs, dropping her bag on the floor. “That was the worst plane ride of my life. I hate this continent, I this country and I hate this entire fucking planet except for Prague and certain southern regions of Siberia.”

“So does Jaquie,” says Peter, his mouth quirking up at the corner. “Although I’m not sure she’s been to Prague.”

“I’ve not been to Siberia, either, so don’t,” says Jaquie without looking up from her script. “Who goes to Siberia, anyway?”

“I had some of the best sex of my life in Siberia,” says Stanley’s sister, and sighs again. “Where am I sleeping?”

“This is going to be good,” Dickben mutters, and pulls out his camera. 

“In a hotel,” comes Fred’s voice from the kitchen, “or somewhere not here,” and Balth looks at her with big pleading puppy-eyes, which makes Peter do the same at _him_ , and Fred says, “Curfew,” and Stanley’s sister says, “What the fuck, Balth, you told me I could stay here,” and Fred growls, “Rules,” in a way that yes, absolutely reinforces every single one of the horrible things Jaquie has ever thought or said about her, yes, that’s true, they’re all true, Fred Kingsley is a danger to herself and everyone around her and probably gets off on telling other people to send their own sisters to fucking hotels, Jesus _Christ_.

“Is that a camera?” says Stanley’s sister suddenly. “Is he filming me?”

“I’m allowed to,” whines Dickben, “It’s in the rules—”

“I didn’t consent to any rules.”

“You did the minute you set foot in this flat,” says Fred. “Sorry.”

“It’s for a vlog,” says Dickben, “which is—like—I film my friends, and then I post it online, like a kind of diary—my viewers are called Benaddicts, it’s a very popular—”

“So,” interrupts Stanley’s sister, “You’re living under some kind of dictatorship now, is that it? You know what, never mind, I don’t care. I’ll find somewhere to stay.”She turns on Ben. “I swear to fucking God, Hobbes, if you post any of that footage I will end you.”

Dickben swallows.

“It’s almost ten,” says Fred, and Stanley’s sister snorts. “What are you going to do, kick me out?”

There’s a long, uncomfortable pause.

“Right,” she says, flicking her eyes up to the ceiling, “who here knows someplace I can crash for the night, since my darling brother has apparently decided I deserve to freeze to death?”

“Rosa,” begins Stanley, but Jaquie cuts him off. “I’ve got some space in my flat, if you want.”

(Somewhere in the back of her mind, a few beats later, the name Rosa registers, and Jaquie thinks, dimly, that she’s never met anyone _less_ roselike in her life.)

She doesn’t know what makes her say it, and by the way Peter raises his eyebrows it’s clear nobody else was expecting it either. It doesn’t matter. She likes this Rosa, she’s decided, and if she’s traveled as much as all that it means she’ll know how to cook, and clean, and be a decent flatmate, and maybe someone to complain to about Peter and Fred and Dickben.

“You mean you don’t live here?” says Rosa.

Jaquie resists the urge to roll her eyes. “No. I’m a friend of Peter’s. I live alone.”

“Thank God.”

For a hot second Rosa is looking at her, and Jaquie feels stripped, naked, laid out on an operating table and magnified for science, she’s heard the cliche about eyes boring into your soul but she always assumed that was a load of bullshit—Rosa’s eyes are, she thinks, uncommonly beautiful, even when they’re meant to scare you off. She’s like the queen of hell, Jaquie thinks, floating on air, and then, _What did I just get myself into_.

“Alright, Nettie, or whatever the fuck your name is,” says Rosa, almost amiably, breaking the gaze, and comes forward, nudges her a little with her elbow. “Let’s go, I’m fucking wiped.”

 

 

 

TWO. IN WHICH ROSA JONES IS KIND OF AN ASSHOLE AND JAQUIE FALLS DEEPER INTO THE RING OF FIRE

 

“Here, ladies,” says the bane of Jaquie Manders’ existence, shoving his horrible spy-machine in their faces like the shameless paparazzi bastard he was born to be, “tell me something about yourselves.”

“I hate Benedick Hobbes, and if it weren’t for my dear brother’s sake I would take that camera and smash it to smithereens, and then I would find the sharpest smithereen and use it to stab you and leave your body behind a dumpster,” says Rosa, without looking up from her phone.

Jaquie had come to run lines with Peter, and Rosa had come with her to visit Stanley, and when they got there Peter and Stanley were locked away together in one of the back rooms, filming a song, Peter said through the door, for Ben’s YouTube channel. (They were using his camera; Dickben was making do, for now, with his iPhone.) Jaquie was ready to leave right then, but Rosa said, “I’ll wait till they’re finished,” and planted herself at the kitchen table, feet up in a way that Fred would not have appreciated at all; and Jaquie, after some deliberation, took a seat next to her—nobly refraining from making a lewd joke about what were they really doing in that room, anyway, because Rosa was Stanley’s sister and generally people get prickly when near-strangers comment on the sex lives of their immediate family members. (Rosa, Jaquie has noted, is always prickly, and when she isn’t prickly she’s sullen and silent. A dream flatmate, really, even if you take into consideration her habit of changing right in front of Jaquie, and the fact that her stomach is flat and tan and well-muscled (“I hiked across Germany for a summer”) and yes, she could absolutely benchpress Jaquie if she wanted to, Jesus, why do straight girls like her even exist, it’s criminal and impossible and deeply, deeply unfair—proof that God hates lesbians, Jaquie thought darkly, and went to undress in the bathroom.)

Dickben, of course, must have been watching them from behind the sofa—Jaquie is beginning to think he lured them there, somehow, using the same voodoo magic Stanley used to make Peter go all puppy-eyed every time he walked in a room, or that Fred used to keep them all meek and shivering under the weight of her curfew-tyranny—he cornered them, then, there in the kitchen, and began speaking to the phone camera in some kind of painful Scottish accent.

“That camera is evil,” Jaquie says when Dickben looks at her for help, and oh, that ridiculous bow-tie, the glaring camera lens, Rosa’s hair smelling of the sweet vanilla shampoo she keeps in her shower, she can feel a headache coming on. “And I don’t like you.”

“Short but sweet,” says Rosa approvingly, eyes still averted. “I have trained you well.”

“You’ve known me for six days,” Jaquie points out. “You haven’t taught me anything.”

“Jaquie was a stone-cold bitch long before you came along,” says Dickben helpfully, leaning in across the table, “although I guess Rosa’s own particular brand of bitchiness can only be exacerbating it, I wouldn’t have let them introduce you two if I could help it,” and they both turn on him.

“You’re the one filming us without our permission,” says Jaquie.

“And don’t you dare tell us it’s one of Freddie’s rules,” says Rosa, “because it’s not her flat, is it? Other people live here too.”

“Freddie signed the lease.”

“And you’re an arrogant little shit,” says Rosa. “Beatrice would be disappointed if she knew you were calling strong, capable women bitches.”

“Highly disappointed,” Jaquie adds, though she has little to no idea who Beatrice even is, except that she’s dating Dickben and that Peter likes her in spite of it. “She’d probably break up with you.”

“Have either of you even met Beatrice?” says Dickben, his fake accent wavering in distress, and Rosa smirks at him. “We’ve FaceTimed. Balth introduced us while I was in Barcelona last summer.”

“She never told me about that,” says Dickben, frowning.

“Maybe she didn’t want you to know,” says Rosa, still smirking, and looks down at her phone. “Oh, that’s her now. She sent me a video.”

Neither of them can miss the suggestiveness in Rosa’s tone. This, thinks Jaquie’s inner dramatist, this is fan-fucking-tastic, she can’t wait to tell Peter about it—it’s, like, that bearbaiting thing the Elizabethans used to do, that Jaquie had had to talk Costa out of recreating for the opening act of Faustus, except it’s Ben-baiting, a free show courtesy of Rosa Jones, to an audience of one—bearbaiting usually preceded actual performances, Jaquie remembers, and leans back in her chair.

“Are you trying to imply something about my girlfriend?” Dickben is saying hotly, half standing up, and Rosa doesn’t move, her eyes fixed on her phone screen.

“Rosa,” says Dickben, “I’m trying to be the adult here—”

“She’s older than you,” says Jaquie. “By, like, a lot.”

“And with a great deal more sexual prowess, apparently,” adds Rosa. “Hey, you think Mullet Boy’s done with my brother yet?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Dickben with dignity, “because I am the adult here, and I do not keep tabs on my flatmates, because I know them and I trust that they are capable of making their own decisions.” 

“Then explain why I’m currently being held here and filmed against my will, and why I’m sleeping on a couch across town when my own brother lives right here—no offense, your place is great,” she says to Jaquie, who nods. 

“I trust that they are capable of making their own decisions within the framework laid out for them with their own safety in mind,” amends Dickben. “You’re free to leave any time you want to, Rosa. In fact I’d prefer it if you did. And I’m calling Beatrice right now.”

“You do that,” says Rosa. “See what she says. And if you post any of this on your vlog or whatever—”

“You’ll beat me to death with one of the pillars from some famous classical building you visited last winter while you were kayaking in Athens? Yeah, I got it.” Dickben turns to the camera. “And here we must end our journey together. Benaddicts, say goodbye to Rosa and Jaquie, and pray you’ll never see them again as long as you live, because they are assholes with no respect for the artistic integrity of this channel.” 

“Fuck off,” says Rosa lazily, and Dickben packs away his camera and disappears down the hall, presumably in search of new prey.

They sit in silence for a minute or two, watching his retreating back.

“Are you really screwing Ben’s girlfriend?” asks Jaquie, as nonchalantly as she can, and Rosa laughs, really laughs, her whole face crinkling up in amusement—not at Jaquie, but at herself, at Ben, maybe, and it takes Jaquie a minute to realize she’s grabbed onto her arm for support.

“I don’t even know what she looks like. Balth told me a little about her last year, and I just sort of ran with it.”

“That made my day,” Jaquie tells her, laughing in spite of herself, “maybe my whole week. I thought you two were going to fight—”

“I could take him.”

“I’ll bet,” says Jaquie. “Your summer in Germany, right?”

“I also spent some time in Korea,” says Rosa. “I learned martial arts. That fucker wouldn’t know what hit him.”

“Does he ever know, though?” says Jaquie, and that’s enough to send them both into spasms of laughter.

Once they’ve calmed down, Rosa gives her a strange look. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“I guess,” says Jaquie, instantly wary, and Rosa says, “If you’re an actor, why do you hate cameras so much?”

There’s no judgement in her tone, just rough, honest curiosity, and Jaquie looks down at the table.

“I’m a stage actor,” she says finally. “I don’t like movies, or TV, or YouTube. I hate having things I do recorded, because—look, everyone says Marlowe’s plays are timeless, right? But screens aren’t timeless, the world passes them by just like everything else. Marlowe wrote in the moment. He wrote for his audience. He was this brilliant writer, this absolute giant of Elizabethan theatre, and everything he did, everything was performed on stage. And it still lasted forever. Theatre is, like, it’s not something you can just turn on, and hit play whenever you want to, it’s this incredible, visceral thing—if you get to see good theatre, even bad theatre, just once in your life, you’re one of the luckiest people on earth, because you’ve seen something that can only exist once, but it’s not like real life, because it’s beautiful. Real life isn’t beautiful. Doing theatre is like showing people better versions of their real lives. You know what I mean? You can’t change it, you can’t perfect it, because it’s always going to be different, every time you say the lines. If you record that, everything’s lost, and every time you watch it it loses a little bit of what made it so great in the first place. Recording theatre is taking away from the performance, and filming people in real life—that’s just—it’s taking away from something that never had anything going for it in the first place. It’s like theatre in negative digits.”

“So you’re opposed to it on principle,” says Rosa, when Jaquie pauses for breath, but she’s smiling, and she’s looking at Jaquie like she’s just seen some of the most incredible theatre ever written.

“Basically,” admits Jaquie. She hadn’t meant to talk for that long, and if Peter were here he’d disagree with her (they’ve had this fight, this age-old stage versus screen argument, a million times at least—Jaquie would say a sense of immediacy with the audience is crucial for Marlowe, especially Doctor Faustus, what would we do with our monologues for Christ’s sake and Peter would say but then not everybody gets to see it, it’s not fair, and besides which you don’t lose your audience on screen, you just have a different audience and then Costa would come over and say something about Stoppard and Brecht and metatheatrical technique and Jaquie would tell him to take ten deep breaths and pull his head out of his ass and Peter would say something like not in that order, necessarily, but suit yourself and Costa would glare at them both like a cat who’d been disturbed from its afternoon nap) but she’s with Rosa now, and she finds she isn’t at all opposed to it—maybe this is what Rosa feels like when she talks about Tibet, or Berlin, or Nairobi, or San Francisco, and maybe this is how she wishes people would look at her.

“Can I ask you something, then,” says Jaquie, boldly, and Rosa’s still smiling at her, and for a second it almost seems like—

And then Stanley walks in, and Rosa takes one look at him and pulls him close to her, and his whole body is shaking, and Jaquie feels like an intruder, doesn’t think she can be here to witness this—Rosa’s petting his hair, like she must have done when he was much younger, and Stanley’s not crying, exactly, but somehow this is worse.

Jaquie picks up her bag and slips away to find Peter.

 

 

 

THREE. IN WHICH ROSA WANTS BLOOD BUT DOESN’T GET IT BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS A LIE

 

Jaquie spends the next twenty-four hours dealing with 1) Peter Donaldson’s broken heart, which cannot be healed or plied with ice cream, because Balthazar was the only person in that goddamn flat—scratch that, in the entire world, except for Beatrice and John—he ever really cared about and 2) a furious Rosa who says she’s going to rip his intestines out and feed them to the flamingoes.

“How can you even be in the same room with that mullet-headed dicklord?” says Rosa, when Jaquie leaves to pick him up for rehearsal the next day. “Actually, you know what? I don’t care. Just tell him that I’m going to rip his intestines out and feed him to the flamingoes.”

“Will do,” says Jaquie.

“She said what?” says Peter, when Jaquie relays the message. “Yeah, never mind, I don’t even care. Balthazar was the only person in that goddamn flat—scratch that, in the entire world, except for Beatrice and John—he was the only one I really cared about, you know?” He sunk his head onto his knees. “I am the tragic hero of my own story. I’m Faustus. My Mephistopheles is dead.”

“You’re not thinking straight,” says Jaquie, as soothingly as she knows how. “Listen, he’s not good enough for you. He never was.”

“I just don’t know what I did wrong!”

“Move on, Peter. Please.”

“I’m going to die,” says Peter, muffled. “That’s how these stories end, right? First the fall from glory, then the first heartbreak, then the hero’s death—”

“For fuck’s sake, Donaldson,” says Jaquie, her limited patience for real-life dramatics having run out completely. “Pull yourself together. We have rehearsal at Costa’s in ten minutes."

“Nothing matters. I could be dead in ten minutes.”

“Costa’s rubbing off on you. Get up.”

“No.”

“If you don’t, I’m calling Rosa. She learned martial arts in Korea.”

“Fine.” Peter heaves himself up off the ground, glares at Jaquie. “Since when are you two best friends?”

“I like her,” says Jaquie simply. “I think I had a chance with her, actually, before you and Stanley went and fucked it all up with your relationship drama, or whatever. Now come on. Costa wants to reblock act four today.”

“Act four,” says Peter, “the final act before everybody dies. Think about that for a minute, Jaquie,” but he comes to rehearsal, and Costa says it’s the best they’ve had yet, so Jaquie counts it as a win.

 

 

 

When she wakes up the next morning and goes to the kitchen for coffee, Rosa is waiting. “Did you tell him I’m going to rip his intestines out and feed them to the flamingoes?” is the first thing she says when Jaquie walks in.

“Yes,” replies Jaquie, yawning, “and he was terrified. He’s going to flee the country tomorrow morning. Venezuela, probably. Paris. Somewhere you’ve never been. Enter a witness protection program, or something.”

Rosa frowns. “He’s not even sorry, is he?”

“He’s been drowning in his own misery all day, and he’s not scared of you.” 

“He broke my brother’s heart, Jaquie.”

“Yeah, well.” Jaquie shrugs. “Maybe your brother broke his heart.”

“My brother is not a heartbreaker,” says Rosa. “And he could do better than fucking Mullet Boy.”

“Neither is Peter,” says Jaquie loyally, “and I’ve always said Stan—ah—Balthazar wasn’t good enough for him.”

They glare at each other for a minute, and then Rosa sighs. “Do we even know what really happened?”

“They must have filmed it,” Jaquie points out. “They were doing a song for the channel, remember? It’s on Dickben’s camera.”

Rosa goes stock still. Their eyes meet.

“He’s going to put it on his fucking vlog, isn’t he,” says Jaquie slowly. “And then the whole world will see—”

“Over five thousand subscribers, Balth said,” says Rosa, “over five thousand people—”

“It’s going to kill Peter.”

“More importantly,” says Rosa, “it’s going to kill Balth.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“Leave it to me,” says Rosa, springing into action with more agility than Jaquie would have thought possible—she grabs her shoes and coat and handbag, and leaves the flat, letting the front door slam shut behind her. 

Jaquie runs after her into the crisp morning air.

 

 

 

They catch Peter and Balthazar as they’re walking up the stairs to the flat—on their way back from an early grocery run, Jaquie assumes, because they’re carrying heavy bags full of vegetables. (Another flat rule, Peter had told her, was vegetarianism. This is why Jaquie doesn’t do roommates.)

“Hey, Rosa,” says Balthazar, “fancy meeting you here.”

“Jaquie,” says Peter. “Wait, what’s—”

“He’s going to post the footage,” says Jaquie, all in a rush. “Whatever happened between you two, it’s on his camera, right? Give it an hour and it’ll be all over the Internet for everyone to see.”

“We came to stop that from happening,” adds Rosa. “Please, please tell me he hasn’t already done it.”

Balthazar is smiling.

Peter laughs at the look on Jaquie’s face. “Should we tell them?” he says, turning to Balthazar. “We don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

“Tell us what,” says Rosa. It’s not a question, and her voice is low and dangerous.

Balthazar looks at her guiltily.

“Spit it out,” says Jaquie. 

“Now,” says Rosa.

Balthazar glances at the door, then at Peter. He sighs. “We want him to post the video.”

“You what?” says Rosa. “Listen, Balth, you hate things like that! You hate having your privacy invaded, you hate being humiliated, for God’s sake, you hate strangers poking around in your love life—”

“The video was fake,” interrupts Peter. “We staged the whole thing.”

There’s a short silence.

Peter runs his hand through his hair. “We’ve been dating since the beginning of the year. When Ben and Freddie came up with the rules, we decided we had to keep it secret.”

“And Ben can’t live without his vlog, you know,” says Balthazar. “Not with Bea gone. We were happy this year, for a while, and—well, if he didn’t have some kind of romantic comedy to orchestrate, and film, he’d fall apart.” He and Peter look at each other. “More than he is already, I mean,” he amends. “Rosa, don’t be mad at me, alright? I should have told you before. But we couldn’t risk either of you telling Ben about it.

“Why would I tell Ben?” says Rosa. “I hate him! We both do!”

Peter turns to Jaquie. “I’m sorry.”

“You,” says Jaquie, and finds that she’s angry, more than she ever expected to be at Peter. “This has been going on right under Ben’s nose, the entire time I’ve known you—and you didn’t tell me about it, you let me believe your heart was broken, you’d never recover—I was worried about you, Peter, I really was, and you didn’t even bother to—” She stops. “You could have let me in on it, is all I’m saying,” she says, quieter. “I would have enjoyed keeping things from Dickben.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says again, and shifts the grocery bag in his hand. “I just—I needed it to be a secret. I should have been a better friend to you.

“And Balth should have been a better brother to me,” snaps Rosa. “I was ready to kill you, Peter Donaldson.”

“She was,” confirms Jaquie. “I thought I’d have to take sides. I hate real life drama.”

“Well, we’re telling you now,” says Peter. “And anyway, I thought you’d tell Freddie.”

“Why would I tell Freddie?” says Rosa, indignant. “I don’t even—I don’t even like her!”

“You liked her well enough when you first met,” says Peter snidely, and Jaquie glares.

“We don’t talk about that.”

“And as it turned out,” says Balthazar, “Freddie knew all along. She’s more observant than she looks.”

“We’ve been blackmailing her,” says Peter cheerfully. “She’s taken up with some guy in Wellington. Balth agreed to pretend to be dating him, and I said I’d direct Peter’s attention elsewhere. In return, she goes along with our plan.”

“Your scam, you mean,” mutters Jaquie, but the look Peter gives her is so guilty she melts under it. “Fine. We’ll do whatever.” She looks at Rosa. “Ready to pull one over on Dickben?”

“Fuck, yeah,” says Rosa. She bumps Balthazar’s elbow with hers. “What’s the next step?”

“We’re not doing this to Ben, we’re doing it for him,” says Balthazar, a little severely, but Rosa ignores him. 

“We’ve got Fred on board with the video, too,” explains Peter. “He’ll want to put it up, and she’ll support him, and we’ll pretend to be a pair of heartbroken losers secretly in love with each other but too dumb to know it.”

“What is on that video, exactly?” says Jaquie. “Do I want to know?”

“Peter kisses me, and I tell him to fuck off,” says Balthazar. “We wrote the script ourselves.”

Rosa nods approvingly. “That’s my little brother.”

“That’s my Peter,” adds Jaquie, in undertone, and Peter smiles at her. 

“If you’ll excuse us, ladies,” he says, in his best Marlowe-era courtier voice, “we’ve got a punishment to take.”

He holds out his arm to Balthazar, much as he had done to Jaquie, on their way to the flat, the first night she met Rosa—and together they push open the screen door and walk to their doom.

Rosa and Jaquie look at each other.

“Well,” says Rosa eventually. “That was weird.”

“Very weird,” Jaquie agrees, and holds her arm out to Rosa, putting on a Marlowe-lady voice of her own. “Shall we go, my dear?”

“I hate actors,” sniffs Rosa, but she takes Jaquie’s arm, and doesn’t let go of it the whole way home.

 

 

  

FOUR. IN WHICH JAQUIE MANDERS IS GAY AND, IN A HAPPY COINCIDENCE, ROSA JONES IS GAY TOO

 

The next few weeks pass in a blur of school and exams and Faustus and teasing Peter and trying to think of a way to tell Rosa she’s using up all of Jaquie’s good shampoo. It’s been about a month since the Balthazar revelation when Peter asks Jaquie if Ben can film a video in her flat.

“No,” says Jaquie immediately. “No, no, no, no, and no.”

“Please?” says Peter. “He wants to do one with you and Rosa. He thinks it’ll make good drama.”

“There is absolutely no drama going on in my flat,” says Jaquie, “and even if there was, I would not allow it to be filmed, because that’s creepy and exploitative and I don’t like him.”

“I know,” says Peter, “I know. You don’t even have to do anything. Just, like, do your regular thing. Whatever you usually do on weekends. And then you can decide what parts he gets to post.”

“I don’t care,” says Jaquie. “I have no obligation to do things for Dickben Hobnobs, and—”

“Benedick Hobbes,” says Peter. “Look, ever since Beatrice left he’s been really depressed, okay? The vlog is the only real coping mechanism he has. He’s doing badly in school, he and his girlfriend barely speak anymore, and he hasn’t had new vlog material in weeks.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do,” says Peter. “You do care. You pretend not to, but you care about everyone—”

“Shut up, Pedro.”

“Don’t call me that, please.”

“Pedro.” Jaquie leans in closer. “Pedro Pedro Pedro.”

“Don’t be childish, Jaquie.”

“Oh, and what would you know, Pedro?”

“Don’t call me that!” Peter almost shouts, and runs his hand through his hair in distress. He lowers his voice, as if in disappointment. “I was sort of hoping by now you’d have learned to care about someone besides yourself, but I guess I was wrong.”

It’s a guilt trip, Jaquie knows it, and normally she wouldn’t have given in, but—this is Peter, Peter who makes apologies sound like Marlowe and Marlowe sound like a prayer, Peter who would rather be humiliated in front of thousands just for the possibility of putting one of his friends at ease with himself, and—Peter wouldn’t stoop to this kind of tactic if it wasn’t important to him, and Jaquie hates him for it, hates herself for caring, and relents. “One hour,” she says, and Peter hugs her. 

Taken by surprise, she hugs him back, letting her arms fall around him and her cheek rest on his shoulder. “Thank you,” says Peter into her hair, “really,” and Jaquie can feel herself melting. 

“Only for you,” she says, and Peter looks up at her with a wicked smile. 

“Or Rosa.”

“Shut up, Pedro,” she says, just for good measure, and then, “Oh my God. Rosa’s going to skin me alive.”

“Fear of physical abuse is hardly a good foundation for a relationship.”

“Neither is fake rejections,” Jaquie shoots back. “And anyway, that’s not what I meant. She hates Dickben as much as I do. Maybe more.”

“Would it be too much to ask you to call him Benedick?”

“Yes.” She narrows her eyes. “I’m already inviting him into my flat.”

Peter sighs long-sufferingly, and Jaquie leans back into him, thinking about Rosa, and Peter, and how she always seems to be doing things for one of them or the other, how they always seem to be on opposite sides, and how Peter is nice to be around but Rosa makes her want to say things she’d never dream of telling anyone else, not even Peter, and how, at some point, she’s going to have to make a decision.

 

 

  

Dickben shows up at Jaquie’s doorstep at eleven sharp the next day, accompanied by a ruffled and apologetic Freddie Kingston.

“I’m sorry,” she tells Jaquie in undertone, when Dickben goes to set up his camera. “Peter told me you didn’t want to do this.”

Jaquie shrugs, keeping her face blank. “Anything for a friend.”

Freddie raises her eyebrows but doesn’t respond.

“Lights, camera, ACTION,” calls Dickben, positioning his camera right in front of Jaquie and hitting the on button.

Freddie winces. Jaquie sighs.

“This, Benaddicts, is the lovely ray of sunshine Jaquie Manders,” says Dickben, “and her insufferable roommate Rosa Jones.”

“Ben,” says Freddie warningly, and Jaquie decides she’s had enough.

She pads into the kitchen and puts on a kettle. “Tea?” she says, and Rosa, hunched over a book at the kitchen table, nods. 

“Can we put vodka in it?” she asks.

“Let me guess,” says Jaquie, regarding her sternly over the top of the kettle. “That’s how they do it in Siberia.”

“No, actually,” says Rosa. “That’s how they do it in any flat that Rosa Persephone Jones happens to be staying in.”

“Persephone?” says Jaquie in disbelief. “Your middle name is Persephone?”

“Yes, like the—”

“Queen of hell, wife of Hades, I know,” says Jaquie, and almost smiles at Rosa’s surprise. “I’m a World Lit student.”

“Really?” says Rosa. “And here I thought you were just a nerd.”

“Drink your tea, Persephone,” says Jaquie, pushing a steaming mug (sans vodka) across the counter. She changes the subject. “This is wild.”

“You knowing mythology?”

“Dickben in our flat.” (Our flat? Jaquie thinks, cursing herself. My flat. Jesus.)

“Ah.” Rosa takes a sip of her tea. “What I can’t figure out is, why go to all this trouble just to give Whatshisface something to film or whatever? It feels—weird, to me. Why not just live your life, you know?”

“Peter’s not like that,” says Jaquie. “It might seem like it, but—well, he does care a lot about his friends. If he screws one of them over, he’ll feel guilty for months. Once he starts to care about you, he’ll do anything to protect you.” She stirs her tea. “I guess that camera thing must be more important to Dickben than he’s letting on.”

Rosa nods. “Jaquie,” she says, after a pause, “I want to ask you a question.”

Jaquie raises her eyebrows. “What kind of question?”

“What happened the first time you met Freddie Kingston?”

“What?”

“Peter mentioned it the other day?”

“Oh.” Rosa is grinning, and Jaquie can feel her face heating up. “Well, it was a while ago, yeah? And I went to the flat to run lines with Peter.”

“And?”

Jaquie shrugs. “It’s actually not that big of a deal. It’s just, after she left, I asked Peter if she was gay, and/or single. It turns out she was still in the flat.”

Rosa laughs. “Nice.”

“Yeah. She got all adorably awkward and embarrassed, and then she started talking about the no-dating rule, and the whole ‘Freddie’s Word is Law’ thing, and then she said she wasn’t seeing anyone, and she hasn’t looked me in the eye since. Peter laughed at me about it for like a week.”

“So it turns out she is straight, then,” says Rosa.

“I guess.” Jaquie sighs. “And taken. But I couldn’t date her anyway. She’s kind of a mess.”

“I suppose you’re still looking for your Princess Charming, then?” says Rosa, draining the last of her tea, and Jaquie’s heart skips a beat.

“Yes, if you happen to know of any suitable ladies.”

“I have my connections,” says Rosa mysteriously, and smiles at Jaquie. 

They contemplate each other for a few minutes. Jaquie’s heart is beating out of her chest, and Rosa’s eyes are fixed on her, nothing but her—

“Is Dickben’s camera still here?” says Jaquie.

Rosa peeks around the corner. 

“This is good,” says Dickben in a stage whisper. “This is really good. Another love story! Drama! Romance! Everyone is living in a romantic comedy but Peter Donaldson.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” says Rosa.

“Come on,” says Jaquie, not taking her eyes off her. “Let’s go have sex.” She raises her voice. “Unless our stalker over there plans to film that too.”

“Well,” says Dickben, “if you—”

Freddie swats him with a rolled-up newspaper Jaquie’s had lying on the couch for months now. Who knew it would ever come to such good use? “Okay, guys, we’re leaving. It’s, uh, been nice filming you, yeah? Great. Have fun. Turn the camera off, Benedick.”

“I have some good footage, anyway,” says Dickben, switching off the camera with a satisfied air. “I actually think this scene is, like, a really nice parallel to the other relationships in the flat, you know—the communication, the honesty, that the Benaddicts don’t see in a lot of my videos, especially the ones about, uh, Peter and Balth—”

“Leaving now,” says Freddie loudly, and then, over her shoulder, “Sorry.”

“If you post any of that footage, by the way,” says Rosa conversationally, as the paparazzi make their way to the door, “I will—”

“No, please, Rosa,” Dickben whines, “she said I could film—just this once—”

“I will find you, and I will make you wish you were never born.”

“She’s ripped, too,” adds Jaquie, almost absentmindedly. She’s staring at Rosa, who still hasn’t moved her gaze. “Just get them to leave, okay?”

“He won’t post anything,” says Freddie. “I’ll make sure of that.”

“You can’t—”

“It’s my camera, Ben, and it’s Peter’s channel. Come on.”

The door closes with a small click, Dickben’s futile arguments getting fainter and fainter as Freddie drags him away.

 

  

 

FIVE. IN WHICH THERE IS A PARTY

 

“How was it?” is the first thing Peter says when Jaquie arrives at rehearsal the next day. “You slept with Rosa, right? That was real? Ben told me.”

Jaquie glares at him, setting down her bag. “How were the last six months sleeping with Balthawhatever the fuck his name is without telling me?”

He winces. “Fair point.” As Costa enters the room, waving a handful of prop swords and yelling something about reblocking act four for the millionth time, Peter leans toward her a little, says, “Look, I’m happy for you, alright?” His mouth quirks. “And now that we’re both dating Jones siblings, we can have a double wedding. You and her and him and me.”

“Wait, who’s dating a Jones sibling?” calls Chelsea, taking off her coat in the doorway. “Which Jones sibling?”

Paige mutters something to her, and her face clears. “Oh, right. The thing. The Peter thing. The thing we’re not supposed to talk about.”

“Does everyone know about this but me,” says Jaquie, under her breath to Peter, who looks sheepish. 

“She’s a friend of Balth’s, alright?”

“And you’re a friend of mine,” says Jaquie. “Anyway, I’m not mad about it. I just like how your face scrunches up when you feel guilty about something.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were hitting on me, Jaquie Manders,” Peter says, wry, and Jaquie scowls at him.

“DO ANY OF YOU HAVE SOMETHING YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE CLASS,” booms Costa. “SOMETHING INVOLVING DOCTOR FAUSTUS, SPECIFICALLY ACT FOUR, SCENE ONE OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS, AND USE OF FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY THEREIN?” 

“Nothing important,” says Chelsea brightly, and Costa melts, just like everyone melts around Chelsea.

“Then get out your scripts. We open in a week.”

 

 

  

When she gets back from rehearsal, Rosa is sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea. She smiles, and Jaquie, taken by surprise, can feel herself smiling back. She heads to the kitchen and rummages in the pantry for something to eat.

“How was Faustus?” says Rosa, once Jaquie resurfaces, and sits next to her at the table.

Jaquie shrugs, biting off a granola bar. “Okay. I still think I’d be a better Faustus than Peter.”

“Your director doesn’t think so?”

“Nah. He says I—quote—‘don’t have the right energy’. Unquote.”

“Meaning he doesn’t want a girl Faustus.”

“Pretty much.”

Jaquie, after a moment of hesitation, rests her head against Rosa’s shoulder, enjoying the warm solidity of it, the way Rosa stiffens at the contact, then leans back into Jaquie—and they sit there, like that, for five minutes, or ten, or fifteen, Jaquie’s lost count—and then Rosa says, “Balth’s having a birthday party next week.”

“Really.” 

“Yeah. At the flat. He’ll be nineteen.”

Jaquie yawns. “So I guess you’re expecting me to go?”

“Peter’ll invite you anyway.”

“Mmm. Okay.” Jaquie opens one eye to look up at her. “But if I get caught on camera, you have to make him not post it.”

Rosa snorts. “Deal.”

 

 

 

The party is relatively painless.

They play good music (Balthazar, presumably, is acting in the role of DJ); there’s plenty of drinks; early in the night Paige and Chelsea drag her out to dance, and then Rosa gets up from where she’s sitting to join her, and—Jaquie didn’t know Rosa could dance, and apparently neither did the others, but her moves almost rival Jaquie’s (almost, Paige assures her later) and Jaquie thinks: of course. She’s a musician, of course she would dance.

Dickben’s girlfriend is there, plus some of his and Peter’s other friends, and people Balthazar knows from music things, and almost all of them want to dance—Jaquie slow dances with a girl named Meg, all grace and fluidity and bright red lipstick; out of the corner of her eye she sees Rosa talking to Dickben’s girlfriend, and smiles to herself. In another corner, Freddie Kingston has her arms thrown around the waist of a man Jaquie recognizes as the barista from Rosa’s favorite Wellington coffeeshop; she has a drink, and another, and everything is warm and pleasant and nice, and Balthazar is swaying along to the music with his eyes closed in a way that reminds her of Rosa, and when she points it out, to no one in particular, Rosa laughs softly behind her, and Jaquie turns, throws her arms around her, pressing her face into Rosa’s neck.

“Happy Stanley’s birthday,” she says, and she can feel Rosa’s grin like it’s second nature, stands on tiptoe to kiss her.

“Hmph,” says Rosa, kissing her back, “we’re in the middle of the dance floor.”

“Are we?”

“Yes. Let’s go outside.”

“Cold,” says Jaquie vaguely, grabbing onto Rosa’s arm, and notices Chelsea near them, Dickben’s camera in hand.

“Would you like a selfie with Chelsea?” says Chelsea. “Ooh, how about a double selfie with Chelsea? Like, selfie with Chelsea, couples edition.” 

“No, not really,” says Rosa. “I already did one.” She steps aside, tries to steer Jaquie toward the door.

“Yes, but I can get Paige, and it’ll be, like, lesbian selfie with Chelsea.”

“I’ll do a selfie,” Jaquie tells her. She’s feeling very good-natured, right now, and she thinks she must look good, too, because the flat’s lighting’s perfect for a picture. Something to remember this by. 

She slings her arm around Rosa’s waist. “Come on. Lesbian selfie with Chelsea.”

“Fuck you,” grumbles Rosa in her ear, but Jaquie just holds her tighter, and the camera flash goes off.

“Ben’s not allowed to put that up, by the way,” says Rosa, finally on their way out the door, and Chelsea looks startled.

“The vlog? Why not?”

“Because if he does, I’ll rip his intestines out and feed them to the flamingoes.”

“She knows karate,” adds Jaquie, seriously, and then doubles over with laughter.

“Just—” Rosa rubs her temples. “Tell him, okay? I don’t want to be on camera more than I already am. And Jaquie’s drunk, she’ll regret this—ah—lesbian selfie thing in the morning.”

“You got it,” says Chelsea. “I’ll tell him.” She winks and wanders away, presumably in search of Paige.

“See?” says Rosa in undertone, as they finally make their way out the door. “I honored our deal. Your theatre lives in the moment. Untouched by time or Marlowe. Visceral. Like life—” She gestures grandly at the sky— “But better.”

“You’re drunk too,” says Jaquie, affectionately, and kisses her.

 

 

SIX. IN WHICH THERE IS ONE WEDDING AND NO FUNERALS TO SPEAK OF

 

_ Twelve years later _

 

“There’s a lot of people here,” says Rosa. “I hate them all.”

Jaquie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that’s kind of the point of weddings. Just turn around, okay? I need to fix your hair.”

“My hair’s fine. I thought I wasn’t supposed to see you before the wedding, or whatever?”

“Seven years of bad luck for us, then,” says Jaquie, smoothing Rosa’s bun back into place. “Or is that mirrors?”

Rosa turns to meet her eyes. “You’re nervous.”

Jaquie sighs. “A little.”

“You want to back out?"

“No.”

“Alright.” Rosa smiles, a sight that Jaquie’s become used to, but still never ceases to thrill her. “I’ll see you at the altar.”

“It’s a date,” says Jaquie, turning away again, and Peter pokes his head in.

“What’s Rosa doing here? You’re not supposed to see each other before the wedding!”

“Fuck off,” says Rosa cheerfully. “I’m leaving."

“Good.” Peter eyes her. “You look great, by the way. Your best man spent all morning tuning his guitar and crying.”

“I’ll go check on him.” Rosa grimaces, and on her way out the door: “You don’t clean up so bad yourself, Mullet Boy.”

“Why does she still call me that?” says Peter, once they’re alone. “I haven’t had a mullet since I was thirteen.”

“She loves you, really,” says Jaquie. “It’s a sign of affection. Um. Sister-in-law stamp of approval, or something.”

“She didn’t even come to our wedding!”

“She was in Nepal.” 

“So were you! And you managed to get back in time.”

“That’s because I was the maid of honor.” She glances in the mirror. “Do I look okay?”

“Radiant,” says Peter, and kisses her solemnly on the cheek. “Go get married.”

 

 


End file.
